Productions

According to her testimony, in 1889, an American journalist Nelly Bly travelled the world in 72 days, unaccompanied and despite the lack of any experience. It was the first attempt ever made to beat Jules Verne fictional character. Despite the appeal for adventure, the journey consisted, in fact, of seventy-two days of boredom rotated by rare exiting events and true wander. The young journalist spent all of her time sitting in carriages or on decks, rushing up and down trains & steamers, travelling from her cabin to the restaurant and back. After reading the book, the world of commercial travels feels like a dull reiteration of empty rituals, racist images and dry comments. Yet as the 1st class journey still happens across the Earth, here and there, N. B. catches a glimpse of the world; ends in some memorable accident; makes fleeting, beautiful encounters. From a realistic observation of her physical experience and the vacuity of the enterprise, we started counting our 72 days in a black box.

 

What is there to be experienced at the end of our journey is no longer the collection of visual impressions of a world glimpsed from a train but a spectrum of physical sensations. The body of the performers is constantly searching through forms from disparate sources, channelling foreign presences to the stage. In this bizarre world, which oddly reminds a claedhscop everything is connected by the human desire to be carried away entirely, by one thing only, out of necessity. The cast, all-female, leaves before our eyes for a journey, a physical effort to experience and at the same time remembering what is about to be experienced. They take us into sensible inaccessible territories, through a language that is sometimes poetic and sometimes inevitably political, up to where the recent past is archived and ready to be told.

Duration 120 min
Language no problem

Supported by Estonian Culture Endowment, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre & Heldur Meerits